On St. Patrick’s Day, Tom Ruddy will mark his 38th year working at General Motors’ Toledo Propulsion Systems plant — but the joy of hitting that mark is muted by the frustration of not being able to plan his future.
Ruddy, who turned 62 in January, had planned to retire in the first few months of this year. It was a plan sweetened by a special attrition retirement program GM agreed to in the United Auto Workers’ contract negotiated last fall. The program will pay a pretax lump sum of $50,000 to eligible workers who retire.
The contract allows three specific times when people can retire and get the bonus. Prior to each time, GM and the union will agree on the “timing, size, and scope of the offering,” according to the contract. Therein lies the problem: The contract was ratified in November and GM has yet to commit to the timing or other details, leaving Ruddy vexed.
“This is GM’s total unpreparedness to honor this commitment, because they’ve had three months,” Ruddy said, noting he and others have already put off retirement by four years when the special attrition program in the last contract had a cap on the number of people who could participate. “How much longer do we have to wait to find out what’s going to happen with this program?”